php/oci-extension: missing leading zero

Reading numbers from Oracle in PHP results in missing leading 0s if -1 < value < 1.
The reason for this behavior is because Oracle OCI omits 0s in results and PHP converts all results from OCI to strings without performing any casting depending on column datatype.

A simple workaroud consists in converting to float:

$a = '.63';
echo (float) $a;

source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4284571/php-oci-oracle-and-default-number-format

Oracle alternative:

REGEXP_REPLACE(TO_CHAR(x), '^\.', '0.')

or if we handle negative numbers

REGEXP_REPLACE(TO_CHAR(x), '(-?)^\.', '\10.')